Too Close For Comfort

Hey, wasn't that the name of an 80s sitcom?  Remember Monroe, the clumsy neighbor?  It was funny, because the guy I grew up with as the "dork next door" ended up playing a teacher on a sitcom my kids watch years later.  Very weird (and makes a gal feel old).

That's not what this entry is about though!  Recently I got a nice comment about one of the current strips of Bitmap World. The reader liked it, which was good, because every time I looked at it I feared the worst.  Thing is, it wasn't because I thought it was a bad strip.  I just have this horrible habit of hating everything I do creatively for the first day or two after it's up.  I look at it, and all I can see are the flaws--no matter how minute.  I always wonder if I could have worded something differently, if I could have done something a teeny bit better.  And, then there is that awful fear that people will just think it outright sucks.  I know that latter is gonna happen, since not everyone is going to like what I do.  I guess the key thing I fear is everyone thinking it sucks.

I realize that the main reason for this is that I'm too close to it.  When you're working on a project, be it an article, a short story, or a single strip, you are immersed in it for a period of time--you eat/drink/breathe it.  For me, the comic process does not start when I sit down at the computer to actually draw it. It begins sometimes days and weeks earlier, as I hash out the dialogue, think about the blocking, and get it all laid out in my head.  By the time I actually DO the strip, I've already been working on it for several hours.  So, when I'm finally done with it, I'm sick of it and want to move on to the next strip.  I think that negativity bleeds into my perception of the project.  I don't want to look at it...ever!  Of course, I have to eventually.  And, once I have detached myself from it sufficiently, I can look back and appreciate it.  Well, most of the time.

I'm musing about this because this is something that has happened to me my whole life. It must be one of those deep-rooted things that has followed me since I was a kid.  I guess if I was being psycho-analyzed, someone would point to some traumatic incident when I was young that made me this way.  Hey, maybe that one time my mom totally burst my bubble when I tried to play The Star Spangled Banner on my kiddie keyboard....?  Either way, I have always been like this.  The difference was in the past I primarily wrote fiction, and then moved on to articles for the internet. The period between projects was larger.  Even doing monthly articles, I would have several week breaks between projects.  If I hated what I wrote, I could walk away for a period of time, so I didn't notice it as much. Now, doing a bi-weekly process, this whole "too close" thing is magnified because it's happening all the time.

Despite it being a negative thing, being so hard on yourself does have it's positives.  I think I work hard to create something good, every time.  And if I ended up hating something after that initial cool-down period, it makes me work even harder to make sure the next one is better.  Still, I do wish I could get past it.  It's not a good feeling to hate what you do, even if the feeling passes in a few days.

Anyone else like this, or am I just a big freak (like I've always suspected)?